This chaotic fast paced world that we live in is fueled with frantic pressures, busy responsibilities and grueling demands. We live in an era of technology and advancements that are supposed to make the working world more efficient but has only created more work that requires greater prerequisites and higher expectations. Just keeping up with today’s technology is work in itself.
Nowadays more middle aged people are going back to school to change their careers than ever before, just to keep up with the ongoing advancements in today’s ever changing technologies.
With all of the gadgets that are in everyone’s hands these days no one seems to have time for anything anymore, especially in the American family life. However, this is nothing new. Since the late seventies both parents have been working full time jobs to maintain a household and the generation that has spawned from it is a generation that relies mostly on the world for their ethics and morals since the parents are usually so busy. Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “Never before have we had so little time in which to do so much.”
Boy, if he could see the pace that the world is spinning at now! The world is sure to keep us busy and keeping us busy is one of Satan’s many ploys to distract us from God since he is the ruler of this world, (John 12:31). The apostle John warned us about not loving the world or the lusts of it for they are not of the Father, (1 John 2:15-17). The world does not love you.
It will take all it can from you then chew you up and spit you out. The world will entice you with all of its lusts, shallow promises and pride but the world does not care about you. However… God does! Because of the rampant pace that the world spins us around and with all of the evils that accompany it we can sometimes feel that the Lord is very distant from us but the truth of the matter is that He is not far from any of us, (Acts 17:27).
One of the most comforting things about being a Holy Spirit indwelt born again Christian is the intimate closeness that exists between you and God. Especially when you keep yourself engulfed in His word on a daily basis. When you are indwelt with His Spirit, He goes everywhere you go.
The Christ indwelt believer understands that the ways of the world and the things that are in it are all but temporary and the world is passing away. But God is eternal and when God has indwelt you with His Spirit you have inherited that eternity.
That is why when Jesus told Nicodemus that whosoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life (John 3:16), He was referring to obtaining eternal life in the present tense by saying “have” eternal life, rather than “will have” eternal life.
This isn’t to say that we instantly become immortal beings at the moment of conversion but it does mean that we have permanently obtained the promise of eternal life and nothing or nobody can take it from us. That is why we have it now… because we can’t lose it!
One of the most challenging things about being a Christian is maintaining our joy in a world full of pain, sadness, death and sorrow. Satan is out to rob us of our joy and he walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8). But as I stated above, the key to overcoming the sorrows of the world is to remember that this is all temporary.
If Christ is your Savior then you are already victorious over all of those things. Just as the faithful patriarchs of the Old Testament times endured the pains of the world by looking forward with faith to the future Messiah who was to come and free them from Satan’s grasp (see Hebrews chapter 11), we Christians today have to faithfully look backward and forward.
We look backward at the finished work of redemption that Christ has done for us on the Cross and we look forward to the eternal kingdom that He has promised us when He returns.
When we look back at Christ’s accomplishments we must also remember that He endured what we endure. When the Lord Jesus Christ left His eternal state of glory and entered into the world and took on human flesh He was entering the enemies territory with us! He had to endure all of the temptations that we do. He took on hunger, thirst, weakness, sorrow, pain and even death!
All things that are the result of sin being in the world yet He was without sin. He then became sin for us (1 Corinthians 5:21) while on the cross and had to be forsaken by the Father while he bore our sins. Out of all of the sufferings and trials that we may endure on this earth that is one that we are not subjected to.
The Lord has told us that He would never leave us nor forsake us (Hebrews 13:5), and Jesus said that He would be with us always (Matthew 28:20) and again that the Holy Spirit would abide with us forever (John 14:16). So we have the assurance that God will not forsake us from all three of His persons. Because of all that Jesus endured while in His human state He is able to identify and sympathize with us so that He can minister for us as our current heavenly High Priest.
We can look upon Christ in the present tense knowing that He is currently sitting at the Father’s right hand interceding for us (Romans 8:34). To think of all that Jesus has already done for us when we was here on the earth, that even now He is still caring for us in heaven. Are you feeling the love?
God becoming flesh in the person of Jesus Christ is the greatest manifestation of His relationship to us. God has allowed us to know Him through His written Word but He has allowed us to know Him even greater through the person of Jesus Christ.
When we know Jesus we know the Father (John 14:7), and we can certainly know Jesus through the gospel. The First Advent of Jesus Christ was the revelation of the mystery of God to all men. That God has been manifested in the flesh, the mystery of His Godliness has been revealed to us (1 Timothy 3:16).
It is sheer utter amazement that the Lord God who is beyond limitations and who created the heavens, the stars, the planets, the earth and everything in it, took on a human body with all of its limitations which He Himself originally designed and created and then willfully allowed His own creation to crucify Him so that we could in turn spend eternity with Him (see Hebrews 2:14).
The sheer love that is involved in all of that is beyond comprehension without the empowering of the Holy Spirit to bring it to ones capability of understanding and acceptance so that it can be channeled into faith. Throughout the whole process of the incarnation of God to Man we must remember that God did not give up His deity in doing so—only His partial position from the heavenly glory.
It is impossible for any of us to be in two places at once but not for God. It may be a mystery to us as to how God can divide Himself into three persons but it isn’t a mystery as to why He does it. God is in three persons so that He can always be with us. If God was just a monotheistic deity that sat on a cloud somewhere in deep outer space then we could indeed say that God is far from us.
But God desires to be close to His beloved children and to do so He has designed a way to always be near to us, even within us! Let’s take a brief historical look at God’s earthly presence:
• God dwelt with Adam and Eve in the Garden until sin separated them.
• God led Moses and the Israelites through the wilderness in the form of a pillar of fire.
• Jesus Christ (the second person of the Trinity) appeared in a theophany to several patriarchs throughout the Old Testament. A few examples are (Genesis 18:1-13, Genesis 32:30, Exodus 33:11, Joshua 5:13-15, Judges 6:11-24, Judges 13:22, Daniel 3:25).
• God filled the Tabernacle and the first Temple with His Shekinah Glory.
• God spoke to and through His prophets firsthand.
• Jesus Christ, (the second person of the Trinity) became human flesh and dwelt among us, (John 1:14).
Now the current earthly dwelling place for the Lord is within the bodies of born again believers in the form of His Holy Spirit.
“Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
God can’t get any closer to us than that! Let us now consider the third person of the Holy Triune of God – The Holy Spirit. The Spirit is hard at work here on earth. The night before Jesus was about to be crucified He told His disciples (and us), that He would be sending us a Helper that would abide with us forever and that He would dwell with us and be in us and that He would not leave us as orphans (John 14:16-18).
Jesus was speaking of the Holy Spirit, (the third person of the Trinity). We are still living in the era of the working of the Holy Spirit and it is an era of incredible grace. The Holy Spirit testifies of Jesus (John 15:26) and Jesus testifies of the Father (John 8:38). That is why blasphemy (or denial) of the Holy Spirit is the unpardonable sin (Mark 3:29).
The Holy Spirit is the Person of the Trinity that is currently on earth. If you reject Him then you reject the way to the Son, which is the way to the Father (John 14:6). Without the work of the Holy Spirit throughout the last 2000 years the writing of the gospel and its message of all that was done by Jesus to accomplish our salvation would have been lost in the annuals of time but He has preserved all of it. It is the Holy Spirit that is the liaison between the church and Jesus Christ in this current Age of Grace.
If the recorded and known presence of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit throughout history isn’t enough to convince you that God is with us then there is the evidence of His existence by what is observable in the external world for the creation reveals the Creator.
For instance, the starry heavens, the preciseness of solar and lunar eclipses and the variables that are involved in the earth maintaining just the right temperatures for human life to exist are just a few of the many undeniable evidences of God’s hand at work.
Psalm 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork” and Romans 1:19-20 tells us that God’s presence is clearly seen throughout nature and that man is without excuse. If God were not with us then we would surely know it just by the natural order of things.
The mere fact that we have light is a sign that He is with us because God is light and without Him there would be darkness (1 John 1:5). The fact that we are all breathing is also a sign of His presence since He is the giver of breath (Genesis 2:7 and Acts 17:25).
Science and atheists will try to explain these things off with theories, research and studies but most of time they are left with many unanswered questions but the proof of God’s existence is a closed book and that book is the Bible. The Bible in its entirety is a progressive revelation of God and the Holy Spirit continues that work in our present lives.
My friends, God is not hidden from us. If you seek Him you will find Him (Deuteronomy 4:2 and Jeremiah 29:13), and when you do you will be surprised just how close He has been all of this time. The question is are you seeking Him?
He has revealed Himself to us in so many ways that we truly are without excuse for not knowing Him. Especially in the era in which we live where we have the completed Bible, the revelation of Jesus Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
Folks, the ball is in our court not His. He has done more than enough to reveal Himself to us. If you want God in your life then you can have as much God as you desire. Just read your Bible daily and before you read pray first and ask Him to reveal Himself to you and I guarantee that if you do that with a sincere heart then He will surely reveal Himself to you and that is when a loving relationship begins.
May it give you the guidance to come boldly to the throne of grace and walk through this life having the assurance of knowing that He walks with you!
“Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 14:14-16).